Five former Barclays traders, jailed in Britain for rigging global benchmark interest rates, can launch a fresh attempt to overturn their convictions in the appeal courts, Britain’s Criminal Cases Review Commission said on Thursday.
Alex Pabon, Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef and Colin Bermingham turned to the CCRC after former traders Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo succeeded last year in quashing their convictions for manipulating Libor, a now-defunct interbank rate.
The CCRC, an independent body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice, said it had determined there was “no distinguishing factor between these cases and the cases of Mr Hayes and Mr Palombo, and the jury misdirection and legal errors have undermined the safety of all the convictions”.
CONVICTIONS TO BE TESTED
The Serious Fraud Office, which prosecuted the rate-rigging cases that were once considered among its most high-profile, has conceded that other convictions might be unsafe in the wake of Hayes’ and Palombo’s exoneration. It did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Former New York-based traders Merchant and Pabon and London-based Mathew were convicted of conspiracy to defraud in 2016 and handed prison sentences ranging from two to six-and-a-half years.
London-based Moryoussef, who gained notoriety by fleeing to his native France before his London trial, was sentenced to eight years in his absence in 2018 and London-based Bermingham was convicted in 2019 and handed a five-year prison sentence.
Ben Rose, co-founder of law firm Hickman & Rose who represented Merchant, Mathew and Moryoussef, said he hoped the Court of Appeal would act swiftly.
“While not yet the acquittal they all deserve, the referral from the CCRC is a vital step in these individuals’ long journey to justice,” he said in a statement.
Since winning his long battle to overturn his conviction, Hayes – the first person jailed for benchmark rate rigging in 2015 – has sued his former employer UBS in the U.S. for more than $400 million.
Hayes alleges the Swiss bank cast him as the “evil mastermind” of the rate-rigging scandal to shield itself, destroying his career and reputation and causing him emotional and physical harm.
UBS has asked the U.S. court to dismiss the case, noting the bank had to pay $1.5 billion in penalties to UK, Swiss and other regulators, while a Japanese unit pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud, reflecting the breadth of its investigation and undercutting Hayes’ allegations that he was unfairly singled out for prosecution, a filing shows.
Designed to estimate the costs at which banks will lend to each other, benchmark rates such as Libor were central cogs in the global financial system and a benchmark for interest rates on an estimated $450 trillion of financial contracts, from derivatives to student loans.
(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley）
